I have just discovered that Sirius's 70's on 7 channel replays old 70's shows of Casey Kasem American Top 40. The replays even include all of the audio dropouts (love it!) that had developed over the years on the old master tapes. All of a sudden, for some odd reason (probably because so many of the 70's Top 40 songs never receive any airplay anymore), I have become a big fan of the show, as I never was before. I noticed that the show from November of 1971 that was playing this morning, was in mono. I assume (hate that word, as it has gotten me into trouble so many times before) that if the show had been recorded in stereo, Sirius would have recorded and played it back in stereo. Anyone know if the shows were recorded in mono for a time being? Or were separate copies in mono sent to AM stations, while FM's got the stereo versions? Or was it universal that all shows started out being recorded in mono, and eventually switched to being recorded in stereo?
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Casey Kasem American Top 40
- Thread starter Brian Bowers
- Start date
The program was delivered on stereo vinyl.
They also offered a reel. Currently, this is on air on many terrestrial radio stations. It is available as a weekly mp3 download.
From a technical standpoint, the 1971 show I heard sounded pretty good. Anyone know if the source material was basically and exclusively vinyl?
I remember back in the 90s when the station I was working for here in New Zealand started playing the Rick Dees Weekly Top40, and they also played Shadoe Stevens American Top 40.
(I do remember this same station played the Casey Kasem AT40 many years prior to me starting there.)
All of these shows would arrive on vinyl, get played on a Sunday morning between 8 and 12 (usually), and Monday morning when I arrived at work there'd be a stack of vinyl in the bin.
Sadly, I never realised the value or the importance of those albums otherwise I would have grabbed as many as I could. They were issued with instructions to be destroyed as soon as they had been aired, and countless albums were dumped.
I must have picked up a couple of them somewhere along the line as I still have those to this day, but a couple of albums doesn't really count when a whole set is needed to be able to 'play it again, Sam'.
I too would love to hear Casey Kasem's American Top 40 on the airwaves here, so I contacted a company in Australia that holds the broadcasting rights to it. They were more than happy to oblige, and send us the weekly shows - but the cost was unsustainable.
Our community station relies mostly on grants, and we do not have the budget to purchase syndicated shows like this.
I must acknowledge that they were prepared to give it to us at a substantially reduced rate, which was quite reasonable all things considered, but we simply couldn't justify the expenditure.
I then set about looking for someone who has the complete series of AT40, so I could at least transfer them to digital (CD or HD) clean them up and have an 'archive' of the shows. Even if we couldn't air them (copyright and licensing etc) it would still be great just to listen to them privately.
So far I haven't been able to find anyone who has the full series (or even close to it).
Anyway, I left radio around 1994 and didn't come back to it until 2003. By that time all the vinyl had gone, replaced by CDs and internet downloads.
(I do remember this same station played the Casey Kasem AT40 many years prior to me starting there.)
All of these shows would arrive on vinyl, get played on a Sunday morning between 8 and 12 (usually), and Monday morning when I arrived at work there'd be a stack of vinyl in the bin.
Sadly, I never realised the value or the importance of those albums otherwise I would have grabbed as many as I could. They were issued with instructions to be destroyed as soon as they had been aired, and countless albums were dumped.
I must have picked up a couple of them somewhere along the line as I still have those to this day, but a couple of albums doesn't really count when a whole set is needed to be able to 'play it again, Sam'.
I too would love to hear Casey Kasem's American Top 40 on the airwaves here, so I contacted a company in Australia that holds the broadcasting rights to it. They were more than happy to oblige, and send us the weekly shows - but the cost was unsustainable.
Our community station relies mostly on grants, and we do not have the budget to purchase syndicated shows like this.
I must acknowledge that they were prepared to give it to us at a substantially reduced rate, which was quite reasonable all things considered, but we simply couldn't justify the expenditure.
I then set about looking for someone who has the complete series of AT40, so I could at least transfer them to digital (CD or HD) clean them up and have an 'archive' of the shows. Even if we couldn't air them (copyright and licensing etc) it would still be great just to listen to them privately.
So far I haven't been able to find anyone who has the full series (or even close to it).
Anyway, I left radio around 1994 and didn't come back to it until 2003. By that time all the vinyl had gone, replaced by CDs and internet downloads.
The vast majority of Top40 stations in 1970 were AM. It was pretty common practice to for AM stations to only wire up one output of a phono cartridge to a single preamp or to a one channel of a stereo amp (using the other channel for the second turntable). This worked as long as the records were mono, but the consequence of playing a stereo record meant that one channel of audio might be missing which was a big deal in some of those early stereo recordings. It didn't become common practice to wire the left and right cartridge outputs in parallel until mono records became unobtainable. I worked for an AM in 1980 that was still wired the old way. One of my first jobs was to parallel the cartridge outputs so that the station could properly play stereo records. By 1973, enough FM stations were playing Top40 that the demand would have been there to switch AT40 into stereo.
*sigh*chriscollins said:
richard.vanderveen said:
I concur on the compression, but I think we all know that these cheapskates are never going to give us .wav or FLAC downloads of long form programming. I sure do wish they would, though.
I was wondering about the delivery of the classic AT40 shows. I thought the current run of the AT40's was delivered by the bird in the sky.
I will feel more comfortable with the complete show in my hands before air time with the FTP server downloads In case the bird crashes. I figure by now they will do away with the lousy mp3's and use wave or flac files for better quality.Hard Drives are cheap plus editing software and computers are faster now then as they were before.
For nostalgic feeling I wish they left some of the old commercial stopsets in on the shows for the real feel of the original broadcast. I would love to hear some of those old Coke - Cola from the 1970's in the mix.
I will feel more comfortable with the complete show in my hands before air time with the FTP server downloads In case the bird crashes. I figure by now they will do away with the lousy mp3's and use wave or flac files for better quality.Hard Drives are cheap plus editing software and computers are faster now then as they were before.
For nostalgic feeling I wish they left some of the old commercial stopsets in on the shows for the real feel of the original broadcast. I would love to hear some of those old Coke - Cola from the 1970's in the mix.
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